an ocean and a rock
by puertoricanjane
Summary: Sometimes there are letters, the handwriting matching that of the birthday card she ripped up so long ago. Relena keeps them in a drawer at home, neatly stacked and held together by one of her hair ribbons.


The world spins on. Relena is sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. There are hands to shake, bills to draft, speeches to look over. Suit after suit, gown after gown, Earth to space and back again. Her mother on the other side of the comm screen while en route to L-2, teasing her about frown lines. Relena pulls a face worthy of her seven-year-old self and they both dissolve into laughter.

There is coffee, always coffee. She wryly thinks her blood must be full of the stuff. She wouldn't be able to function otherwise.

Sometimes there are letters, the handwriting matching that of the birthday card she ripped up so long ago. Relena keeps them in a drawer at home, neatly stacked and held together by one of her hair ribbons. Blue, the same shade as his eyes. She likes to tell herself it's coincidental.

X

The first one comes six months after the Mariemeia Incident. It starts out rather brusque, reading more like a mission status report than anything else, but that's to be expected. She can't imagine Heero's had much experience with letter writing. Relena can pinpoint the exact moment it changes—a touch of stiltedness remains, his sentences still rather choppy and words concise, but he starts disclosing more of himself. An eight-year-old girl in his apartment complex in Bangkok has insisted on art lessons, appalled at his lack of ability._ I've never drawn anything but schematics_, he writes, and she smiles. She can't stop, it seems; has been since her eyes registered _Relena_ in what could only be his hand, impossibly tidy, no dear or dearest, just her name with no affectations.

Relena composes replies in her head and sometimes on paper. There's no real way for her to write back—the letters have no sense of clockwork or rhythm and Heero's already on the other side of the Earth by the time the next one comes—but it's enough just to hear from him, to know he is well. She folds and unfolds them, liking to reread them when the dreams of billions of people riding on her alone gets to be too much. He tells her of places she hasn't been, things she hasn't seen, the classes he's taking at a local college. Not computer science like one might expect but philosophy, literature.

_The Earth is beautiful_, he writes in one of his letters, but Relena thinks this peace they've helped create is more so. She likes to close her eyes, imagining him on a park bench or in the open air of a café, writing essays and doodling on the ends of napkins. It's a pocket of warmth she carries in her breast, staving off the cold for days and weeks and months to come.

X

Relena is nineteen and her hair is spilled gold courtesy of Heero's clever fingers. She strokes the pad of her thumb over his cheekbone, mesmerized by his eyelashes fanning his cheeks.

"I happened to like that ribbon, you know."

She can feel Heero's huff of amusement against her mouth. His breath is warm and she shivers.

"You have more at home." His fingers curl through her hair, now unhindered in their journey. "You'll live."

"For all you know it could have sentimental value."

The corner of his mouth inches up, just like she hoped it would, and Relena doesn't let herself resist, is incapable of it, not when Heero's a hair's breadth away. She kisses him, thumb still passing over his cheek.

It's short but sweet and Heero leans their foreheads together when it's done, skin on skin, no bulky helmets getting in their way this time and that almost makes it better than the kiss.

They stay like that for a while, just breathing, her bangs stirring with every other breath.

"Do you have a letter for me, I wonder," she murmurs.

She's smiling against the curve of his cheek and has to pull back a little to get a better look at him.

His eyes open at her retreat and her breath hitches. They're lit from within, as bright as the time he cradled the back of her head and asked her to believe in him, and she's fifteen and breathless all over again.

"I thought this time I'd tell you in person," he says.

And he does.


End file.
